If the only real Western achievement of the past quarter-century is now under threat, that’s because we have failed to ensure that NATO continues to … - Anne Applebaum

If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.

The <nowiki> </nowiki> crisis in Ukraine, and the prospect of a further crisis in NATO itself, is not the result of our triumphalism but of our failure to react to Russia’s aggressive rhetoric and its military spending. Why didn’t we move NATO bases eastward a decade ago? Our failure to do so has now led to a terrifying plunge of confidence in Central Europe...Our mistake was not to humiliate Russia but to underrate Russia’s revanchist, revisionist, disruptive potential.

Against this background of improvisation and violence, the first Soviet labour camps were born. Like so many other Bolshevik institutions, they were created ad hoc... as an emergency measure in the heat of the civil war. This is not to say the idea had no prior appeal. Three weeks before the , Lenin... was... sketching... [a] vague plan to organize 'obligatory work duty' for wealthy capitalists.